Inside a railway arch in Brixton, a piece of robotics history is being rebuilt. Eric, the UK's oldest robot, is getting an upgrade.

Roboticist and artist Giles Walker has created a replica of Captain William Richards and Alan Herbet Reffell's robot, which first debuted in the 1920s and helped to form early impressions of robots.

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Like his predecessor, the robot is able to stand, from an initial seated position; turn his head in the direction of onlookers; raise his arms, and talk. Eric's public unveiling in 1928 saw the metal man rising from his seat to tower above an onlooking crowd – then he gave a speech.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, it gives me great pleasure," were the robots opening words. Eric caused "amazement" with his "enormous size." while the "stark immobility of his face gave him a really terrifying quality". In later speeches, he self-prescribed as "the man without a soul".

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Using just a handful of archived news cuttings, pictures and video, Walker has spent three months recreating Eric to look and move in the same way as the original did. "The outside shell was like doing a portrait, which is the trickiest bit," Walker tells WIRED.

Gallery: Rebuilding Eric, the UK's first robot

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Commissioned by the Science Museum and funded through a successful £51,000 Kickstarter campaign, Eric is due to be completed in just a few weeks – before going on display at the South Kensington museum ahead of a Robots exhibition in 2017. When WIRED visits the reconstruction, the robot isn't covered by his aluminium outer shell and is exposed from the inside (giving it an unnerving look).

Eric's guts are where the biggest change has happened. "I've completely digitalised him," Walker says. Underneath the protective metal are seven linear, 12-volt actuators that allow the robot to move. These are accompanied by an assortment of wiring, lights for the lifeless eyes, and a sound sensor allowing it to respond to stimuli.

The robot is built with the same finesse as modern robots but purposefully lacks their capabilities. Multiple motors, arms with degrees of freedom, and artificial intelligence are staples of 21st-century robotics, for example.

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"It's tempting to put in loads of gadgets to make him more exciting but actually, the exciting bit is that it is replica," Walker, whose other creations include a robotic recreation of The Last Supper, explains. What has been the most substantial change in Eric's motion? "We've put in one extra movement – we've given him some elbows," Walker says. "Before he had very straight arms."

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Eric is controlled by a pre-programmed sequence, using software similar to that used for controlling lights in theatres. Beyond the extra flexibility, the humanoid's movements are drastically more graceful than the 1928 version, which debuted at the Society of Model Engineers' annual exhibition, and was controlled with a mixture of ropes, gears and pulleys. In 1929, The New York Times reported the robot made jokes, told the time, waved his arms, and winked at stunned guests, although he only did so at the press of a button at his base.

The original innards were mostly kept secret from Eric's audience, with very little public information about how it operated ever being revealed. "It's like when you're a magician and don't want to give too many of your tricks away," Science Museum curator Ben Russell, tells WIRED.

Walker adds: "It is almost more beautiful. They kept it secret they wouldn't let anyone know."

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On his debut Eric – with RUR emblazoned on his chest, after the 1920 science fiction play Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti that introduced 'robot' to the English language – weighed 45kg, was 6-foot tall, and had lightbulbs for eyes. Particularly terrifyingly, and realistically deadly, were the 35,000 volts of electricity causing sparks to fly from Eric's mouth. (This has been dropped from the rebuild).

"He's the first British robot in our modern understanding of the word (being this tall, broad-shoulder tin man type of thing) and is certainly among a handful of these types of robot anywhere in the world," Russell adds. "He's really important".

Russell says after Eric's unveiling, the robot travelled around Britain, North America and Europe to entertain crowds. This, according to the man responsible for the project, included stopping at piers, theatres, department stores, and even the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although, his success was short-lived. Eric was lost.

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"I think he probably got cannibalised," the curator says. "Eric had a lot of radio control technology, he was absolutely state of the art and very valuable.

"I suspect what happened to Eric was as they started to build George (his successor) they basically took all the useful stuff out of him and cast what was left to one side as scrap. George gets hit by a bomb in the second world war."

Despite the destruction the museum staff have been able to recreate the robot from the minimal scraps of evidence that have been recovered. With the replica due to travel around the world until 2022, it's hoped Eric will capture crowds in the same way he did 80 years ago.

"For me there is that moment when you turn him on and see him move for the first time," Walker says.

"When his eyes start moving around, when you have that fluidity in the movement, that's when he is properly alive," he says.

Almost 80 years since he was first unveiled, Eric may have finally found his soul.

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WIRED

Eric is now on display at the Science Museum as part of its 2017 Robots exhibition. The exhibition runs from February 8 to September 3 2017. As part of the show, Eric will occasionally be standing up and demonstrated.

Within the exhibition are 16 robots that can move and some also interact with those visiting the Science Museum. See some of the humanoid robots on show at the Science Museum here.